Fig. 5

Estrous cycle information enhances the ability to identify sex-specific CTCF loops in neuronal chromatin. CTCF loops (top left) allow long-range interactions in the genome of relevance to gene regulation. A Venn diagram (top right) depicts differential CTCF loops called in the diestrus–male comparison and differential loops called in the mixed-female to male comparison. B A HiC heatmap of a 2 Mb loop connecting the Adcyap1 locus with a region upstream of Mettl4 is shown, with a higher signal in males and proestrus females (solid line) compared to diestrus females (dashed line). C Differential CTCF loops correspond to differences in Adcyap1 gene expression. D When comparing males to mixed females, the averaged signal from females for this loop is weaker than that of males. The corresponding ATAC-seq (chromatin accessibility) and RNA-seq (gene expression) tracks are shown below the Hi-C data. Die (light pink), diestrus; Pro (purple), proestrus; Male (blue), males. All data are derived from 3 biological replicates (n = 6 animals) per group (adapted from [34])